According to the Guardian Prince Andrew has been identified as the member of the royal family the Americans believe is stupid and rude. This is no shock. My grandmother, who is ill at the moment, made her only TV appearance following the Lockerbie disaster – one of my fondest memories of her.

Houses near her home were destroyed. The garden barely thirty metres away filled with bodies. Seats and more through windows at the rear. The hill at the back of the properties covered with parts – each marked. All of the gardens in the vicinity contained wreckage. Some material lay for days. Some bodies there, visible, a couple of days later from the windows in her house.

I saw her house in Time magazine pictures. Saw there what was hanging in the tree near the foot of the garden, which we couldn’t quite make out from her window. The decency requirements of the UK media prevented its publication here.

Her house was not the only one affected. But it was the only one in the immediate area with a working phone. It was the one where the boy soldiers came – the boys – little older than me – who were doing the clear up, helping remove the bits to send to the ice rink, helping to fill the park I played in every summer holiday with case after case after case, and clothes, and presents. And, they came to her house and she let them phone.

And she heard. And my sisters – present in the house – heard.

They knew what was going on.

As I did when I visited with my parents when we went to pick up my sisters.

And we remember.

And so when Prince Andrew visited Lockerbie (on behalf of the nation) and had a quick look around, his comments that “Of course it was much worse for the Americans” were greeted with contempt.

So when my granny appeared on television following the remedial visit of Prince Charles a few days later proclaiming that

“The people of Lockerbie were pleased that Prince Andrew came [beat, her comic timing honed in dance halls as interval comic entertainment was impeccable] until the moment he opened his mouth, and then he went down in everyone’s estimation.”

she spoke for a town, and for many others.

Everyone else in the house the night the plane was blown up and fell onto and destroyed the house a few doors away had problems afterwards. Some still do.

2 Responses to BREAKING: Prince Andrew is stupid royal and has been stupid for at least 22 years

Of course it was terrible for your granny and others who had to view body parts, and other unmentionables. Right you are to take on Prince Andrew on this. The Americans only lost their loved ones, after all. They didn’t even have to look at them until after they were cleaned up!

I am not sure what your point is. I do not belittle the loss of the relatives in the US – they have to live with their bereavements every day. What I know is that the people on the ground are sometimes forgotten in this. The whole discourse around the Megrahi release to large extent ignores the people on the ground. There were lives lost on the ground, families in Sherwood Crescent wiped out, and in addition those on the ground there when the plane fell have in many cases had their lives haunted afterwards. I’m not saying this is worse than bereavement. It is an ongoing pain you cannot understand if you were not there. This isn’t some numbers game about quantifying grief and pain and suffering, about totting up points for casualties as if it’s some videogame. Each loss was a tragedy. But those that survived had their own tragedies too. Their tragedies are still played out today, albeit that some people pretend it isn’t happening and that everyone has moved on. This post is about acknowledging that Andrew’s comments were crass and stupid as he arrived in a town that was scarred appearing to belittle the townspeople’s own pain and sorrow and grief. I think that was stupid. If you disagree that is your prerogative.

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